


The Demons In My Dreams Are You

by Godtiss



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Abuse, Gen, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:39:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Godtiss/pseuds/Godtiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something remarkable about Thursdays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Demons In My Dreams Are You

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an anonymous prompt on tumblr.

There’s something remarkable about Thursdays.

The sun is born from the east, dies in the west. Sometimes the sky is dotted with wisps of clouds; sometimes it is grey and angry, rolling with tremulous energy. The air might be crisp, biting at noses and painting exposed cheeks bright pink; or it might be stifling, dragged down by moisture and heavy with heat waves.

Technically speaking, Thursdays are no different from Fridays. Or Wednesdays. It should be no different from any of the other days of the week, the other life cycles of the sun divided into 24-hour shifts, 1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds.

Thursdays should be entirely unremarkable.

Sherlock Holmes returns to Baker Street, his gait erratic and hair cut shorter and mouth apologetic. He takes the punch that John throws at him, relaxes into the crushing embrace that follows. For three years absence, it is more than he’d hoped for.

It is, of course, a Thursday. 

It’s Mondays that John’s never had any sort of luck with.

It then stands to reason that it is, of course, a Monday when John discovers that Sherlock had somehow rediscovered the solar system during his death. How else would he have managed to so artfully recreate the cosmos on the inside of his elbow, using only needles and bruises?

He yells, at first. Shouts abuse and insults and guilt at the detective until he notices the sincere shame and fear in the fragile line of Sherlock’s shoulders, hunched against his neck as he ducks his head.

John quickly backtracks, fumbling apologies even though he’s not exactly sure why he’s the one apologizing. 

Sherlock’s eyes are hollow when he looks up, and John wonders how he’d missed it since the detective’s return because it isn’t the first time he’s seen that look has crossed his features, digging out his insides until there’s nothing left but flesh and bone and _transport_. 

“It was – for a while, it was an escape.”

Sherlock looks small sitting on the edge of his bed, shirtless and clad only in a pair of loose pyjama bottoms. The patterns of black and blue and purple and yellow of his arms clash painfully against his pale skin. His ribs heave against the thin layer of flesh that shapes to them, conceals them. 

“Then you were - you were with me there, in hell, when the whole reason I’d died was so you wouldn’t have to know what that was like. You were there and you were angry, but you understood why and-

“But I could see you. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t make myself stop.” 

The confession comes tumbling from his mouth, words falling like graceless acrobats, getting so caught up in their fall that their landing falters, precarious.

John feels sick from shouting. 

He kneels before the detective, hands on Sherlock’s knees, on his arms, under his chin to coax his head up so that his eyes meet John’s, watery and defiant and he is shaking, quivering beneath John’s touch. He leans into the contact, starved in more ways than those that expose the delicate expanse of his ribcage. 

It slowly crushes John’s own with the weight of his heart, swollen and throbbing and painful, pressing up from underneath.

“I don’t need them anymore,” Sherlock says, determined and vulnerable in a way John’s never seen. “Not while I have you.”


End file.
